Lily Drone Unable to Take Flight, Closes Down

Lily, a crowd-sourced drone that looked to be the first action selfie drone is shutting its doors.. It was a novel and innovative concept that received a great deal of press attention when announced. However, it never took off. In the meantime several firms executed on the concept of small easy to used selfie drones. These include the Yuneec Breeze and ZEROTECH’s DOBBY drone.

In a company blog post, titled “The Adventure Comes to an End” founders Lily founders Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow said refunds would be given to customers who had pre-ordered the drone. Lily had collected more than $34 million in pre-orders from 60,000 customers. The company was unsuccessful in securing funding for for full-scale production.

In their message to users, they write:

In the past year, the Lily family has had many ups and downs. We have been delighted by the steady advancements in the quality of our product and have received great feedback from our Beta program. At the same time, we have been racing against a clock of ever-diminishing funds. Over the past few months, we have tried to secure financing in order to unlock our manufacturing line and ship our first units – but have been unable to do this. As a result, we are deeply saddened to say that we are planning to wind down the company and offer refunds to customers (details below).

It is an unfortunate end to a company that looked to innovate drones in the consumer space and highlights the difficulty drone firms face manufacturing product in a financially viable way. 3DR and Xcraft while still breathing have also experienced manufacturing challenges.